 What? Man, I hate Spotify. They so evil. What are you doing this to me, man? It's the network. So I'm scrolling through Instagram at like 4 a.m. in the morning and I've come across a post by my guy Nick the manager and it reads it's a DM conversation where it says thousands of artists are having their accounts removed. DistroKid claims that Spotify is doing and due to the fake streams but it's only DistroKid artists and many of the artists don't even have enough streams for them to have been very strange. Apparently 15k or so artists have been removed. Well first of all I've already heard the number to be a lot bigger than 15k but we're not gonna you know get on to that because it's all hearsay at this point. But what's funny enough is I was already working on this video literally then this happened all right because there's a lot of issues with Spotify so we're gonna cover three very specific things that every artist even just manager anybody in music really needs to understand all right one this being taken down right the music being taken down to why it's literally impossible for Spotify to do right by artists impossible. So it's not all their fault I promise you it's not all Spotify's fault. Three what to expect from Spotify some things that are actually going to happen and some things that are a little bit predictive. So number one yes songs have come down in that that text thread they said it might be DistroKid no it's pretty pretty likely to be Spotify not just DistroKid blaming Spotify. People have been told about fake streams from years if you look it up on Google a lot of songs have already been removed for fake streams before I'm telling you this is a warning it's only going to get worse. Us as an agency we've already abandoned so many playlists because this is a massive issue right why because all right it's so hard to really manage and understand which of these playlists are quality or not there's some methods that we do to to ensure or get increased the likelihood but to be honest it's extremely difficult right to the point that we've like begged begged clients not to rely so heavily on play listing just to get their streams we've lost clients for that reason because they wanted to focus on that and we were like look okay fine we're just going to let you go we're not going to put you down that route so you can come blame us on some of the issues right but that'll be a whole another video all right understand this Spotify could they could you know create an accredited system where the playlisters the third party playlisters are verified so you know that it's quality you know that they're not um you know having fake streams because they're managing them and they incentivize those people to have a certain status and keep that status all right they could create some kind of program for that somehow if they really took that seriously in care and that would be amazing for the artist community but the problem is they can't why can't they not do that because well let me explain this all right Spotify has a business model all right let me see tip for all the Vaseline users out there don't put too much of it on before you go to the whiteboard butter fingers anyway Spotify has this business model and a massive part about their business model is their subscriber base right because that is their single most point of leverage because if you have music right they are the gatekeeper to get access to those subscribers beautiful right yes there is this back and forth because the subscribers want music it's a marketplace that's the common thing about marketplaces chicken and the egg however their single most point of leverage is their subscribers nobody has a large of a subscriber base for audio particularly for music right now the issue right because they could say hey the music oh yeah what's the music the music essentially is artist right they're kind of one of the same you might not even be able to see that so bump it right but with that being said there's an intermediary there's an issue right so you can say hey I want to introduce these subscribers to the music which the artists are the creators of the music but the issue comes where the blocker is the blocker are record labels they at least traditionally are the big bad evil person all right and why is that issue well because record labels are the owners of this stuff all right they're the owners of the masters in so many cases they control the music so you aren't really serving artists you have to serve the record labels and the industry has already been established to this point where we already know the negative history right we know how how labels have done artists wrong or or just taking an excessive level of ownership or shoot 100% of the ownership in so many cases that is why these record labels are still around intellectual property all these other things keep changing around them but as long as you are the owner and the thing that you own cannot be used somebody can create a new platform at any time any day they're still going to have to speak to you at some point right you might let them get big enough right and then once they get big enough it's like oh not not yeah that uh that music I need you to run that check all right that's what the labels have done to Spotify they're doing it in their own way to the TikTok now and it's going to happen as long as they hold the very most important thing which is the ownership and this is why artists have so much trouble being served because I know you know a lot of artists are like oh Spotify sucks and they're so bad and they're mean and why don't they just serve the indie artists and not care about the big artists well one is it's a business and that's that's the biggest opportunity and two the biggest issue comes back to when I say ownership they own the music that has the most marketplace value all right so yes you would come out with a new song but it's an eyes right it's an eyes game it's a gamble they don't know if your song's gonna blow up they don't know if you even have enough money to make your song go up blow up right but when it comes to record labels the music that they already own has already been created in terms of marketplace value right people already know it these are classics yes there's new songs that record labels come out with but the money is in that back catalog right the Marvin Gaye the the I mean the OJZ the the 90s whatever right the Beatles all that stuff right so with that being understood if you come into a crooked game it's hard to be the one who cleans it up especially when the crooked one is the one who owns everything you're coming to their battlefield so in that way it is not all Spotify's fault so let's read this this mission right because it sounds so altruistic our mission is to unlock the potential of human creativity by giving a million creative artists the opportunity to live off their art and billions of fans the opportunity to enjoy and be inspired by it right see that's exactly what I said right artist fans they want to bridge that gap but is that guy in between the record label that that's blocking that off and I guarantee you all right at some point Spotify is really gonna say hey look artist well artist means different type of creators because we know they're moving into podcasting different different video I actually have a video that's that I'm about to create in terms of artist leverage and how artists can build leverage or how they need to look at about leverage to understand it I'll put it in the description when I finish it so but understand that this is what's happening right if we had that's the major labels way up here I don't know if that could be seen well so majors and indies the thing is if they truly had a comprehensive playlisting program that allowed third-party playlists and people who have all these niche interests to really just create and find these new artists these independent artists they truly could act as extended A&Rs right you will make sure you know all these playlists aren't just being paola and things like that they would have their own program and if they had that you know how everything truly relying on just the algorithm and the merit of how much people like music well that would take indies from down here to up here and majors from up there to in the center that would level the playing field but that's an issue labels don't want to lay uh level the playing field why would they do that that's against the business model it's already hard enough to make music succeed and to find the artists whose song is going to break there's already that issue so there's a conflict of interest there because labels have a disproportionate influence on Spotify what they can do but of course with that comes what they can't do but just imagine if your man or woman couldn't get a good job because they didn't have a car and you bought them a car and they use that car to not only drive to work but they drove that car across town to cheat on you just trifling that's how the labels look at this scenario it's like I own your most valuable asset I give you the thing that keeps your bills on so if anybody's gonna eat I'm gonna eat first and I just happen to be greedy that's the scenario here but that creates some other opportunities for Spotify or at least some opportunities for Spotify that artists may be able to see is beneficial in terms of progress so that's the third point what we can expect from Spotify well Spotify already has in the works a better version of the ads right that they've currently had because we know at the ad studio in terms of music it has not been the move for well since it came out but this is what it's supposed to look like and I say supposed because they haven't went public with certain things we're talking about systems where you can put your music after songs that actually sound like that music right or that would actually make sense for it to come after more like playlist style right but from an advertising back in and in the same way you would pay for your ad to pop up in certain places you would have your song pop up right more organically and it will play after the right song right then you have things like the marquees where the ads actually pop up right things are a little expensive and get to that in a second all right but things will actually pop up like let's say uh you have a new track a new album or EP that comes out and then you know people are scrolling through the app they open it up bam there you go your big album announcement now the right way to go about that tactically whenever those things do get released if they do still get released in mass that'll be a whole video we'll get into the tactics but understand this so far even with that being said these things that are far more helpful and far more beneficial for artists are going to be expensive all right and that issue comes right back to the same scenario if we actually give you the right tools but the tools are still expensive there's still a gatekeeper type vibe there why is that because we know labels can afford a 5,000 minimum budget if your if your budget has to be 5,000 minimum all right 20,000 dollar budgets if you need a certain amount of money that's just outside of reality for most independent artists they can say they have the tools but the access isn't isn't there all right it's not truly accessible so there's a there's a wow and some things that we have to watch out for in terms of Spotify but if they do come out with an ecosystem that actually has great advertising it's going to be something that they can control and at least they can get some kind of profit out of not going to allow you to truly capture data from bringing in outside traffic from like a facebook or youtube or whatever and that to be used right and tracked properly to then better do so and bring streams no they're going to have the most efficient and effective advertising platform within platform within their platform if that actually ever does happen at scale for labels is going to happen but at scale and accessible to any artist that is yet to be seen that's how you should think about Spotify no it's not all their fault in terms of some of the evil things that that um that they've done right but the reality of the situation is artists should not be relying on Spotify I understand they're the big they're big man on campus however you know the labels they they got the the cojones you know in their hands so you can't quite rely on on their word to always be for the artist right and just leave it at that so anybody way anybody who likes 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